Tidbits: Cheetah 3D and ArchiCAD news

Cheetah 3D 5.5 Adds Particles and Instancing System

This little Mac OS X only application just keeps getting more and more sophisticated. Cheetah 3D version 5.5 now adds a powerful particle system. With particles it is possible to create fountains and waterfalls, nature moving and complex motion graphics. Instancing allows you to render extremely complex scenes like jungles or hordes of aliens without producing billions of polygons that would each need time to render.

Cheetah 3D 5.5 sells for 149.USD. You can learn more here.

ArchiCAD News

Graphisoft has been busy releasing localized versions of its new ArchiCAD 14 across various countries. The US English version has been released on July 6 and marked the 5th of 26 local versions to be released globally. This follows German, Austrian and New Zealand versions. Also released are the following localized versions: Australian and Italian.

Also announced recently is the winner of the ArchiCAD BIM Server Competition. Forty college students from North America demonstrated the power of the long-distance collaborative design technologies in ArchiCAD 14 as part of the competition format. The co-winners consisted of Brandon Martella from the New School of Architecture and Design (in San Diego, California) and Nathan Houck from California State Polytechnic University (in Pomona, California).

The team’s winning “The Yard”, a fictional Alcatraz Prison visitor center, won the top prize. “Although we were 100 miles apart, it was like we were in the same room,” said Brandon Martella. “You don’t need to wait for your teammate to finish with the design before you can start to work on it, and you can comment on one another’s work in real time through the software’s messaging system.”

The design competition spanned the entire globe. Graphisoft hosted the BIM server software from its corporate headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, while US-based Graphisoft personnel monitored the development of the competitor’s designs from Boston. Contestants in the BIM Server Competition registered individually, formed teams online, and then went to work on their designs communicating only through ArchiCAD 14’s built-in collaboration technologies. Additionally, many students benefited from the remote mentoring of Ivan Azebeghi, professor at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Mr. Azerbeghi communicated with the teams from his sabbatical site in China, also via the BIM Server software.

ArchiCAD 14 and its included BIM Server are free to architecture students. More than 1 million in academia have downloaded Graphisoft’s BIM program ArchiCAD. To learn more click here.